When Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools and social care, spoke this week on the plight of vulnerable children in Britain, it was with urgency, as though he wanted to grab a dozing nation by its lapels and jolt it into action. Some failings he laid at the door of the state, painting a portrait of floundering councils failing to safeguard children adequately, town planners who filled up deprived areas with betting shops and fast-food joints, and social work departments suffering from low morale, with experienced people leaving the profession in droves.

Beyond that, he placed the blame for the crisis squarely on failing parents. “Abuse and neglect do not happen randomly,” he said. “They are the result of social breakdown.” This was not purely a result of material poverty: “These children lack more than money: they lack parents who take responsibility for seeing them raised well… they are not given clear rules or boundaries, have few secure or safe attachments at home, and little understanding of the difference between right and wrong behaviour.”

In some cases, the estrangement of biological parents exposes the children to a greater chance of abuse when “the new man in the house – often the latest in a succession of men – is violent and resentful”. I suspect that Sir Michael, who was an inner-city headmaster before immersing himself in his latest role, knows whereof he speaks. That money is not at the root of all social dysfunction must now be evident to us all. That does not mean it is irrelevant. Money could improve the quality of training for workers in children’s care homes, for example, which currently dangle before their vulnerable charges some of the worst outcomes of all.

In families, money can provide an escape route from chaos: there are alcoholics and drug-addicted adults in middle- and upper-class homes, too, but cash pays for good child care and other means of diluting the effect of neglectful parenting. In working-class – or, more particularly, non-working – homes, the children are stuck with the family they’ve got, unless they wind up in care.

Yet while financial poverty certainly matters within a family, other kinds of poverty are far more corrosive: poverty of affection, of education, of aspiration, or of self-worth. In the worst cases, the void created by such neglect is filled with violence or sexual abuse.

There have always been families that have brought up children successfully in straitened circumstances, and still do today – yet coherent working-class communities have been eroded throughout Britain. Fragmented families of a new “underclass” now often disintegrate further behind four walls, in isolation, and children become their hostages. Even worse is a creeping feeling in the wider society that “nothing can be done for them”.

If I look back – as many people will – to my own family history, I can see the example of my paternal grandparents, who raised eight children in a two-up two-down terraced house in West Belfast during the Twenties and Thirties. Few would argue that it was a golden age, yet there were sustaining influences on low-income families. Parents tended to be married and stay together. The extended family usually lived nearby, and provided support. There was a general sense of educational aspiration, and some inherited knowledge of how to cook nutritious food on a low budget. The influence of the Church was stronger, and premarital sex wasn’t openly discussed or encouraged. Work was necessary for survival, and dictated the shape of family life. Neighbours were more judgmental about a family’s behaviour.

There was a cost, of course, not least in limiting the freedom of the individual: domestic violence and sexual abuse were sometimes hushed up, and unmarried mothers pushed to give up beloved children for adoption. Yet the natural involvement of the wider community – not one defined solely by the visits of social services – also provided a safety net for children against the most glaring abuses.

In two of the most shocking recent cases, those of Baby “P” and Daniel Pelka, the biological father was absent, and the mother was in sexual thrall to a violent boyfriend acting as a “stepfather” who horribly maltreated the child. That should have been clear to social workers, but judgment came too late.

In the modern world, adults now take for granted the freedom to reshape their lives according to their desires: duty is an unfashionable concept. Yet adult insistence on freedom, taken to extremes – particularly with regard to sexuality and addictions – can be utterly toxic for children, while shame and pride can be powerful motivators for good. As Sir Michael is trying to point out, there is one duty that still cannot be ignored, except at overwhelming cost, and all other decisions must attend upon it: parents need to put their children first.